


A Dim View Of Things

by StickyShift (parallelDiversity)



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, just happy but sorta sad fluff, okay I wrote this to a death song playlist, okay it's really sad-comfort fluff I'm sorry shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 07:49:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1156997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parallelDiversity/pseuds/StickyShift
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaon slips away from the communications desk to have a moment to himself, but Tarn slips into his habsuite. Slight character development? Just fluff with some sads... okay it's just soft-sads.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dim View Of Things

**Author's Note:**

> I am so sorry AO3 and limited readers. I really... /really/ for some reason never post my best stuff here. AUGH! Hope you like it. I wrote this to a playlist on 8 Tracks called Time Is Slipping Away based on Tailgate's optics watching his life slip away. I know I'm sorry.

If nothing else in the vast, expansive universe impressed Kaon more, it was the infamous Hit List of the Decepticon Justice Division. Its sheer length alone could floor the communications coordinator of said division if he was the type to overreact to things. Day after day he sat in the chair in front of nine wide screens with names and code number flickering past like seconds on each flimsy hour. Though perhaps the list's organization was the most curious thing about its construnction.   
Since Kaon had been handling the list he'd never delved too far into its function. It was a list with items to be checked off and he just happened to be the handler of the items on the list. Each day he did his best in prioritizing code numbers due to proximity of the DJD as well as urgency of termination. Tarn was sure that each should be wiped out in a smooth motion, but unfortunately Tarn did not operate under the function of any being's all-mighty. And so, day after day, as one of the greatest writers of the Decepticon's time once said, life persists. 

Often Koan found himself wondering why each name that wasn't something high up on the list was even there at all. Honestly, the Scavengers bunch had just been queued up because they interfered with Tarn's operation and even tried fighting back. If they'd just thrown Fulcum outside of the insignia ship maybe the one with big feet would've lived and Vos wouldn't have drilled his face into that other one. Krok, was it?   
Before the bot could get too lost in his thoughts The Pet dropped its head into his lap. He looked down and shared a rare smile with the partially domesticated creature. It let pools of lubricant drool spill onto Koan's lap, but by the tenth cycle of bringing the Pet onto the ship he'd gotten used to it. 

Petting the creature idly, Kaon looked back to the list. The name Overlord sat proudly at the top of the list with his face listed besides a code number along with an option to expand the massive file of incriminating material. It was funny, actually, having someone so horrifying and feared with such a large pair of lips. If no one laughed on his operating table at least once, they died in vain. 

Chuckling to himself, the bot stood and left his post. By the noise of the ship things were quietly coasting through space. So not to be out of the loop he turned on his personal communications frequency and spliced it with the list and the ship's main-signals so he could be reached. Kaon didn't feel like letting his dim optics short out in front of a wall of screens. Besides, he'd memorized the list anyway. If it needed recalibration he could leave that to the motherboard.

 

Inside his habsuite Kaon sat on his berth, optics fixed on the window in the wall. The stars were stretching endlessly against the black canvas of space, both nebulas and asteroid belts danced in the unimaginably eternal existence of space. Though, sighing with regret, he didn't exactly have 1080p vision. Even squinting all the communications coordinator could make out was shapes with light and dark variants. For all he knew he could be looking at Hedonia or Overlord's private corpse collection. He couldn't tell left from right. 

That's what he loved about working the same job in the same spot on the same ship. Once you acclimated to where everything was and where everyone else was you didn't have to worry about walking into and mildly stunning your commanding officer twice in the same day. Even just recalling that day made Kaon's spark twinge with shame. Luckily he caught on after practically fading out in embarrassment. 

Even so, life persists. Kaon got much better at moving around and his job got easier with knowing the list top to bottom and back again. The hardest part was getting off the ship and becoming accustomed with terrain you won't be on for two hours. Thankfully The Pet has a habit of leading the way and Vos is always good about steering him in the right direction without the air of impending doom being lost. As long as Kaon always kept that stone-cold look of disinterest Tarn could whisper the whimpering to their end. 

Nevertheless, the world was greatly compartmentalized when you were floating among the stars with nothing to do and the main-com line being unpleasantly quiet. None of Tarn's megalomaniac aspirations to literally talk a world into submission, no translating Vos's comical neo-Cybertronian to anyone else, and even The Pet had scampered off to chew on some more ex-con's arm in the shadows of the inventory room. There was only silence and reflection left. That or recharge. 

Weighing his options, Koan leaned back against his berth and hooked himself up. He flicked his com off, let what pathetic vision he had left turn to darkness as he offlined his optics, and sighed. Monotony aside, he was bored. Weaving his hands behind his helm, minding his tesla coils that constantly buzzed with electricity, the communcations coordinator wondered if days got any more idle than this. 

Just when the bot was about to slip into stasis he heard the door of his habsuite slide open with its signature hiss. Kaon pretended he didn't hear it, but he knew right away who it was. 

Tarn didn't know better and kept quiet as a massive warlord could in a silent habsuite. He approached Kaon who, to his knowledge, was in stasis. The young Decipticon had always been loyal and hardworking. Perhaps not as murderous as the job required, his his alt-mode was always helpful. It was rather humorous to see how little proactivity Kaon put into his participation of the hunts. He could hold a bot down while carrying on a chat as Vos impaled that bot's face with his own or electrocute a Phase Sixer while noting that he should hollow out his spark for The Pet. Interestingly enough, the madness didn't shine through until Kaon could get someone alone. A twinkle could be seen in his shorted optic sockets, like a spark of life jolting through. Only Tarn had ever seen what sort of Cybertronian Kaon really was and the leader cherished it. Though, that's always how Kaon had been. Vaguely disinterested and unintentionally comedic until digging the optics out of some poor soul. Looking again, Tarn couldn't help notice that attractive could be added to Kaon's list of fine points. 

Ever since that blindly diligent bot had joined his crew Tarn had cursed himself. At first they were as they should be, leader and subordinate, but things quickly changed. At least on Tarn's side it had. One brush with the communications bot's tesla coils and he was hooked. The sensation had been blissfully lively unlike the work which put the energon on the table. 

That spark of life, the electricity that had been a blind brush of mistaken direction, had jumpstarted a feeling in Tarn that he thought he'd been forged without: curiosity. Kaon had simply run into the Decepticon at the time, optics long since shorted and unsure about the layout of his new home, but he'd done more damage than he'd realized. 

On the berth, fans whirring, Kaon couldn't help but become stiff with nervousness. Why was Tarn just standing there? Was he going to start singing him to submission because he'd messed up the list? No, that wasn't exactly his style, was it? Tarn liked to hear the screams of the fade out. He got a rush of something addictive out of hearing the spark short and implode on itself. So what was he just... just standing there for? 

Before Kaon could sit upright and ask his leader if something was wrong he felt hot servous touch his face plates. The bot suppressed a shudder of shock, but he let it happen. One thing he had learend quickly on the Peaceful Tyranny was not to object to your leader's requests no matter how strange. 

Lying still against the metal berth Kaon felt his leader's fingers tilt his chin softly as if looking at him closely. Unmistakable wafts of energy pulsed through his own eternally charged field. His tesla coils popped with life, the bot cursing himself. Tarn chortlted. 

"Your only fault is that you can't play dead for long," Tarn smirked. Kaon sighed, onlining his already pathetically useless optics and tried to make out his leader's shape. Though he didn't really need to see him to know that rich, beautiful voice. 

Kaon couldn't bring himself to speak. He only looked up at his leader and ran through the thousands of possibilities of his answer. There was no denying it, Tarn's familiar carress. So what was the meaning behind it? 

The blind bot sighed and looked up at his leader. He loathed himself for it but he couldn't help but let little pops of electricity roll off his coils when he felt Tarn's energy roll through his own field. Ever since his audiols first picked up that Decepticon's rich, complex voice Kaon had been sold. No matter how monotonous the task, if he could benefit Tarn even slightly it was enough. Just to stay by his side. 

It was strange, the undying devotion to a cause. Long ago they'd forgotten why the Decepticons had become something finite. It was a task of eliminating targets and with Megatron becoming more and more ambiguous in his influence of power, your allegances were with those leading you to survival. Kaon had learned this quickly and had forgotten allegiances to the system. There was only Tarn and the list. 

However, inside the habsuite was something different. He'd heard the stories from Vos' idle conversation over energon rations when the two had a chance to talk. Tarn was something akin to his passions, free from the bloodstains and addiction. The peaceful ebbs and flows of a melody and a the final blissful reprieve... if he trusted you.   
"Kaon what do you do when you're not running the communications?" 

What a stupidly blunt question. Kaon, if he could, would have shuttered his optics as if to say, 'That is the rudest thing I've ever heard. I've been running your coms for how long?' He could only tilt his helm in the direction of the winow that showed a passing nebula, its colors brilliantly drifting through space at a nearly stand-still pace. He could only pick up hues and build images in his cortex, but even without optics he could see the inexplicable majesty of the stars. 

"I watch the window," he said simply. "I used to not care... I actually used to do things that were unspeakable to the enemy. Do you know how easy it is to fry a spark with electricity when the bot isn't a phase sixer?" Kaon said idly, face unchanged though he was speaking of mass murder. "I used to think that the stars in space were ever collapsing sparks. Heh... though, I was much younger when I thought stupid things like that. In the holding cells, where the Autobots were kept, I'd lead them to a near collapse and then watch their sparks burst. It's the most beautiful sight... but every time I'd reach out to touch them... the electricity would short them out and the subject would die." 

Kaon jolted a little when he realized his ramble. He fumbled over words, but Tarn simply smiled behind his face plates. The bot nervously pursed his lips and hoped the silence would end. 

"Don't be shy. Tell me more." 

The communications director felt a weight of a second bot press against his berth. Tarn sat at a comfortable distance next to Kaon, but it still made the younger bot's spark flutter. The older tank smiled, sighing as he looked out the window where his crewmate's shadowy optics were fixed. 

"I... It's strange. Between stops and chases... the world's very quiet, isn't it? You wouldn't really know we're at war... that the universe hates us until you touch ground. I like space... It's quiet. Peaceful, even." 

The old captain of the Peaceful Tyranny let a sigh through his vents break the silence in the room. He remembered a time when he wasn't working under the title of captain, when music filled his life and such peace, such beauty had danced through his audiols rather than blood-shed and execution. Though he favored both, he couldn't help but long for the days of peace. But Kaon had a point. Up in the air, up in the vastness of the skies and stars, that momentary bliss returned, even for a moment. 

In the small, standard crew-sized habsuite Tarn watched the colors of the nebula drift away from his already dark field of vision. The massive captain saw the slump of his crewmember's shoulders and thought for a moment. They weren't running on any leads. Their name could stand as a dark myth for one more day. 

Tarn momentarily contacted Vos on the private comm line to the helm of the ship. 

_You sure, boss?_ The old lingual purist asked. 

_Absolutely, Vos._

Kaon's optics painfully strained to take in the colors shifting back into view. Impossible. There couldn't be two nebulas that dense that close together. Could it? 

"How...?" 

"I had Vos reverse the ship and idle it," Tarn said smoothly. 

Kaon turned his head and looked up at Tarn. The captain simply smiled behind his faceplates and sudden the air crackled with electricty that branched out and ran up Tarn's armor and fizzled against his treads. The communication's bot jolted, covering his mouth with his hands in shock. 

"S-sorry!" 

"No," Tarn smiled again, hidden by the purple plates. "It's fine." 

The tesla coil-accented bot couldn't even find words when he felt Tarn's servos slide around his waste. His shorted optics looked up to Tarn and immediately shot down into his lap in shock. He could feel his face warm, engines purring softly and vents forcing calm breaths. More pops of electricity rolled off of Kaon's coils and danced up Tarn's plating, always to die at the treads. 

In the near silence of the habsuite Kaon and Tarn settled on the berth. To avoid more pops of nervous energy, Kaon fixed his strained optics on the nebula, hoping that in the peace of the stars, he could find clarity for his throbbing spark. Tarn simply began to hum a sweet tune, something akin to a lullaby in old Cybertronian, bringing the hour of calm to its complete. 

Cycles past and the two bots simply laid in each others company, Kaon's optics long offlined as he listened to the rich, layered voice of Tarn who let the song roll on. And he'd never found peace more comforting in all his function than when he was lying in Tarn's broad arms.

**Author's Note:**

> Are there any mistakes? I did this in WordPad and it doesn't have spellcheck and I'm lazy. Good? Yay/nay? Feedback, darlings, I'd love any!


End file.
